07/04/2008

Did You Ask A Good Question Today?

Isidor I. Rabi, the Nobel laureate in physics who died Jan. 11, was
once asked, ''Why did you become a scientist, rather than a doctor or
lawyer or businessman, like the other immigrant kids in your
neighborhood?''

His answer has served as an inspiration for me
as an educator, as a credo for my son during his schooling and should
be framed on the walls of all the pedagogues, power brokers and
politicians who purport to run our society.

The question was
posed to Dr. Rabi by his friend and mine, Arthur Sackler, himself a
multitalented genius, who, sadly, also passed away recently. Dr. Rabi's
answer, as reported by Dr. Sackler, was profound: ''My mother made me a
scientist without ever intending it. Every other Jewish mother in
Brooklyn would ask her child after school: 'So? Did you learn anything
today?' But not my mother. She always asked me a different question.
'Izzy,' she would say, 'did you ask a good question today?' That
difference - asking good questions -made me become a scientist!''